


All This Time

by agoodwoman



Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M, Ghouli, Season 11, The X-Files Revival, episode fic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-10
Updated: 2018-03-03
Packaged: 2019-03-16 04:33:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 11,973
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13628661
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/agoodwoman/pseuds/agoodwoman
Summary: Set during Ghouli and picks up after Duplicity of the Afterglow





	1. Chapter 1

In times of solitude, a person can let down their guard and feel the most vulnerable. In isolation, a psyche can be free to let new ideas or another person in. It’s a contradiction in nature - to close oneself off while being amongst others but for those who need to preserve their strength amongst snakes in the grass, it made sense. Walking into work these days wasn’t always easy after they were put on a watchlist and chased from their home. Being among people she couldn’t trust, including her boss, had created new walls to be put up once she donned her badge and slipped her gun into her holster.

At home, in her apartment in Washington, D.C., she found solace and comfort with the one person who could make things better, safer and happier. Mulder was wrapped around her like a warm blanket while she slept, feeling protected from the onslaught of fearful dreams that had plagued her since her first seizure a few months ago.

It was a Monday morning and they had been spending their time at her apartment through the week. The home they shared was still under major repair and it had taken longer to fix the staircase and areas of the home since Mulder insisted on the work being done on weekends while he could supervise.

You could take the paranoid spook out of the basement but you couldn’t take the paranoia out of the spook.

She could feel herself slowly waking up as Mulder’s hand moved up her waist to cup her breast through the lacy undergarment she had donned the night before. Shortly after she exited the bathroom wearing it, and feeling slightly ridiculous, Mulder had pulled her under him on the bed. He removed the thong bikini underwear with his teeth and they were flung somewhere close to his bedside table before showing his appreciation for her keeping the ‘ridiculous thing’ she told him she would never wear.

He couldn’t possibly be ready for another round again. It had to be the middle of the night. She refused to open her eyes while he pressed his burgeoning desire into her bare backside and kissed behind her ear.

“You’re joking,” she grumbled into her pillow as she held on to it tighter.

She felt her nipple harden under his touch and cursed the reaction. She wasn’t immune to his advances but this wasn’t the time. This was sleeping time.

“I would _never_ joke about such a thing,” Mulder whispered as he smoothed his hand down her front and back to her breast to squeeze it slightly. “This is not a laughing matter.”

Reluctantly, Scully opened one eye to see the red light of her alarm clock on her bedside table. This was not an hour she welcomed this kind of activity.

“It’s four a.m.,” she pointed out to him as he neck kissed the sensitive spots on her neck, sending a tingling sensation to her sex.

“Four oh seven,” he corrected her as he spoke into her skin and moved his hand down from her breast to her side. His palm smoothed over her hip and to her backside, in between their bodies. “You’re _wet_.”

“Mulder, that’s probably from last night,” she grumbled into her pillow and he scoffed. That was doubtful. He had left her feeling completely satiated and she knew her response was from this morning. There was a beat of silence in the air and she rolled over in the bed to face him. “Can I at least get up and brush my teeth first?”

Mulder ran his hand along her arm as he nodded. He was studying her body and the space between them as she tried to extract herself from his embrace. She felt ridiculous in [the negligee ](https://www.venus.com/viewproduct.aspx?BRANCH=129~4042~&ProductDisplayID=22831)he had bought her. The deep V of the lacy black neckline came past her belly button with only a string of rhinestones to hold the material in place. The halter top dipped low in the back with a delicate string tying the material in place under her shoulder blades. It was finished with a satiny ruffle hem around the bottom at her upper thigh. The item was entirely see-through and there was no such thing as modesty. She might not have put the item on and sat on the hood of his car to eat a burger like she promised but when she opened the bathroom door with it on, he didn’t have any words to complain.

She gave him a look and he held up the hands that had just been groping her.

The morning air in her apartment was warm but the tile floor in her bathroom was cold under bare feet. Her fingers brushed against his toothbrush in the cup and felt the dampness of recent usage. Mulder must have been up before he decided to wake her with a morning conjugal visit.

As she moved the toothbrush across her teeth and cleaned the sleep from her mouth, Mulder came up behind her. His hands took her hips and he pressed his face into the curve of her neck as his hardened desire pushed into her backside. Scully attempted to keep cleaning her teeth but Mulder was persistent.

“Hi,” she said through a mouth full of toothpaste. Mulder released her enough for her to spit the foam into the sink and she stood up to smile at him in the mirror. “I see you.”

“Do I have your attention?” he asked her as he grinned back at her.

She made a face as she rinsed her toothbrush. “Since you asked.”

“ _Please_ ,” he whispered in her ear before he kissed the sensitive spots on her neck. He knew every spot and how to make sounds of pleasure and wanting to emanate from her mouth. “Please, Scully.”

While it was no secret that when she said ‘please’ there was nothing he could deny her, it was lesser known that she had the same weakness for wanting to help him. In this case, it was no so much help but satisfying the need he had for her. He had loftier requests in the past. Dissect this alien infested rock from Mars, prove I’m not crazy while I’m claiming zombie bugs are taking over this telemarketing company or prove this global conspiracy. Of course, she acquiesced each request.

Any exhaustion she was feeling prior to now was gone. She was alert, aware and wanton. His hands on her body had awoken her and she was ready for him. If this was anyone else, her readiness might be embarrassing but for them, it was convenient and fortuitous.

Mulder slipped his cock from his boxers and pulled the negligee up so the cheeks of her ass were exposed to the cool morning air. Her body felt hot under his touch and she was tingling in anticipation.

She gripped her fingers into the edge of the porcelain pedestal sink as he brushed the head of his cock against her slippery folds. With his other hand digging into her hips and her back arched, he pushed inside of her in one hard thrust.

“ _Fuck_ ,” he hissed.

Scully turned her face to his and their mouths met for a long and passionate kiss. Her walls relaxed and throbbed around his hardened shaft. Mulder’s hips rocked against her backside and she held his head to hers with her right hand. The kiss broke as Mulder pumped his hips once and she cried out. She gripped the edge of the sink and he pressed his head into the bare space on her back between her shoulder blades.

“ _Sorry_ ,” he huffed.

“Don’t tell me that was it,” she joked and he shook his head against her skin. “Then why are you apologizing?”

“That wasn’t a bad yelp?” Mulder asked as he pulled back and thrust up again.

“N… oh _no_ ,” she managed.

“Well then, never mind,” he breathed and began a slow, steady but hard pace.

Her legs felt shaky in the morning and her hips were sore from the position he had her bent into last night. She arched her back for easier access for his thrusts.

“Can you touch yourself, Scully?” Mulder asked as he continued to pump in and out of her. “Touch yourself.”

She wasn’t concerned with a big orgasm at this point. She wanted to feel him come and possibly finish in the shower later but that wouldn’t be enough for Mulder. He couldn’t handle her being there just for him. The man was selfish in so many aspects - not that she resented any of that - but as a lover, he needed to ensure her happiness above all else.

She moved her right hand between her thighs and felt his shaft brush against her fingertips. She used the moisture of her arousal to spread around her lips and began working the bundle of nerves that sent sparks through her body. It was electric and thrilling, standing in the dawn of the morning with the sun peeking through the clouds while he took her this way. The small window in the bathroom let in just enough light and sound, they could hear the city beginning to wake up as they did this together. She would have to don a suit. He would tighten a tie and they would sit in their office with badges and guns in mere hours to discuss something official with the shared knowledge of morning coitus floating between them.

It was a cliche to appreciate the naughtiness and sinful acts still on her skin while sitting across from Skinner in a debriefing of their latest case, yet some things couldn’t be helped. Pushing the limits, rebelling against an overbearing figure and pushing back against authority were some of the small habits Scully had enjoyed developing since becoming Mulder’s partner. Prior to that, she had pushed those feelings of needing to rebel down. They manifested in trying her mother’s cigarettes, dating someone in college who was entirely wrong for her and getting a lower back tattoo with a man she barely knew.

Now, she developed those urges into actions that she and Mulder could both benefit from. Right now, she was partaking in a morning fuck that she would be feeling for the entirety of the day while she pushed papers with Mulder in their basement office.

Mulder’s teeth sunk into the tendons on her shoulder and she leaned her head away from the sensation to encourage further access. She delighted in the acts that his tongue and teeth could play on her flesh whether it was between her thighs or along her breasts.

He kept his hips pumping against hers while she moved her finger across her sex. She was swollen and tight. Every thrust pushed more of her arousal out onto her fingers. Her inner lips were pushing out and as she touched herself, they were both working towards a release.

“ _Scully_ …” he whispered in reverence.

When she opened her eyes, she saw him watching her face and she felt her skin flush further. Mulder chose this spot because he wanted to watch her as he did this to her. He was a visual man. He appreciated the visual aspects of sex as much as the emotional ones. She didn’t disregard his appreciation for the image of them together or the emotional elements which was why in times like these, she let the actions play out as they were.

Mulder’s pace was becoming erratic and he was pushing into her harder and harder with every thrust. She was close to the edge of her orgasm and her fingers pressed against her flesh harder to get herself to find her release. It was sudden and overwhelming but her release was acute and all-encompassing. She felt it down to her toes and through every ounce of flesh on her body. It was enthralling as she felt her womb burst and contract while she reached the heights of ecstasy.

“Oh, _god_!” she cried out. “Mulder!”

He quickened his pace and growled her name before he finished inside.

There was a beat as they panted off beat from each other as their hands held the edge of the pedestal sink. Mulder kissed along her shoulder and she felt the spots his teeth had marked that she ignored in the moment.

“Ready?” he asked as he pulled two tissues from the box on the back of the toilet.

Scully took the Kleenex from him. “Go for it.”

He pulled out quickly and they hissed at the change. Mulder cleaned himself off as Scully used the bathroom. He tossed the tissues in the garbage and washed his hands as she flushed the toilet.

“I’m going into the boxing ring before work,” he announced.

Mulder had started boxing in the last few years and the efforts had paid off. He teased Skinner behind his back in 1999 when they were trying to get back onto the X-Files that boxing was the sport for men with bad knees. Mulder enjoyed the benefits of the sport, the cardiovascular challenges as well as the muscle endurance.

Scully pushed her hair over her shoulder and looked at him in question. “I’m glad you’re doing that versus challenging me to another 5 km run.”

“I like that you mark that _one_ running route we have in metric,” he said as he left the bathroom to change. “It’s so _internationally math nerdy_ of you Scully.”

Scully washed her hands and looked down at the negligee. She shed the undergarment and pulled on a pair of black button up pyjamas similar to the ones Mulder had pulled off her body in [Henrico County](http://archiveofourown.org/works/13373283/chapters/30626553).

When she exited the bathroom, Mulder was tying on his running shoes. He was dressed in his workout gear already with a suit bag folded into his gym bag.

“I’m going back to bed,” she announced.

“I like the other sleepwear better,” he replied and kissed her lips quickly. He gave a quick peck to her forehead and pat her bum twice. “See you at the office.”

“Enjoy your exercise,” she called to him as she climbed back into bed.

It was quiet without him there but she liked quiet during random moments after his noisy presence disrupted anything like her sleep or work. She pulled the sheets up to her face and tried to focus her breathing to slow so she could get back to a state of REM sleep. Work wouldn’t need her for another three hours. She could possibly sleep for two and still have time before work to read the paper or eat breakfast.

As she fell back into slumber, she found her mind drifting to a state where she was her most vulnerable. Most people believe there are two states of consciousness: sleep and wakefulness. But there is a third state: hypnagogia, characterized by dreamlike visions and strange sensory perceptions.

It was in that borderland that Scully found herself frozen on a stranger’s bed.

The sheets under her palm felt unfamiliar, the air was cooler than her apartment and the walls were covered in posters and a solar system diagram that looked more like art than a school project. The pillow was too flat and the mattress was too firm.

She couldn’t move from where she was but she could tell from just looking around the room, it wasn’t her bed or her home. She wasn’t trapped inside a memory of waking up at the house she and Mulder shared. This was someplace entirely different.

She could feel herself being watched as she lay there, unable to move and she felt the danger of something coming towards her. Her body wouldn’t allow her to turn over to the figure. If it was going to harm her, she was unable to move to defend herself. It scared her more that she couldn’t move the more she tried. It felt paralyzing but not in the same way that victims of sleep paralysis describe their experiences. She wasn’t trapped inside her body, she was stuck in the position she found herself in when she opened her eyes within the hypnagogia. It was as though the person watching her was holding her in place with his eyes, looming over her and holding her still with a gaze until he deemed it permissible to move.

Her gun was on the nightstand of this stranger’s bedroom. Her eyes fixated on the weapon and she realized she couldn’t roll over towards the figure. She might be able to roll away from it.

Suddenly, her body was able to move and she rolled off the bed, grabbing the gun in the process before aiming it at the hooded figure across the room.

He took off out the bedroom door and she followed it down the stairs and into the living room. She kept her gun drawn and her eyes peeled in the darkness of a house that looked like strangers lived there together. There was nothing personal about the space. It was a showroom, too tidy and furnished with paintings over family portraits.

The front door closed and as she exited through it, she found herself back in the living room. A sense of panic set in but she wasn’t going to run away from the figure that was luring her through this maze. She was meant to find the person who had been watching her. There was something she needed to know but she wasn’t sure of the question. She just had to know what was going on, why she was there and who the figure was. The rest of her questions would come to her once she knew those three things.

Again, she searched through the house, this time running from the kitchen out to the back porch and then through the front door to hear the door close behind her. She was trapped and there was no way out.

“What the hell is going on?” she whispered to herself as the house felt as though it was beginning to spin around her.

Scully ran back up the stairs to the bedroom to try to make sense of where she was. The only door she could walk into was the bedroom she first found herself in. There was a shelf against the wall with snow globes of strange places and things as though they were specifically made for a person with unusual tastes rather than gift shop trinkets.

She turned quickly as the presence from before was looming again. When she tried to focus her eyes on his face, all she saw was dark hair and a familiar lanky build that reminded her of Mulder but younger. It wasn’t Mulder, that much was true. As she stepped towards him, he disappeared.

“Damn!” she cursed.

There was a vibrating behind her and she turned back to the shelf. The row of snow globes were now black balls except for one. A passenger and car ferry was docked at an unknown bay with the words Chimera at the bow.

It was disorienting and the fear came back. Once it overwhelmed her, she was suddenly awake in her bed, alone and shaking.

Scully sat up immediately and put her head in her hands. She thought about calling Mulder back to the apartment but she shook off the urge. She wasn’t going to get anywhere by discussing it then.

The clock on the nightstand read six thirty-four a.m. and it was close enough to her usual time to get up that she decided to get out of bed for good. She removed her pyjamas and put them in the wash on top of the negligee she had on only hours ago and stepped into the shower.

If it was a dream, it was the first time she was able to control her actions in a lucid way instead of being directed by her subconscious. She could feel herself out of a REM state and not quite a wakeful mindset.

She knew of hypnagogia but had never experienced it herself. The last time she felt this out of sorts was when she had the seizure months ago when she saw the possible future and the need to find William.

Unfortunately, even with the reach of the FBI office, they discovered only dead ends when it came to tracking down Jack and Caroline Van De Kamp. Wyoming didn’t have any public record of the former farming family that took William into their home in 2002. They had only dead ends when they searched for William and she was beginning to worry that her dreams of seeing him in the future might not come true.

In one of her visions, Scully and Mulder found William at a compound near Great Falls, Montana. He had been saved by the very people they lost so many years ago. Were the visions she saw of the future a possible one? They had confirmation that Langley was dead through Titanpointe and Blarney Operations.

She left for work feeling discouraged about all she had seen. What if all of this was just more of the seizures and none of what she envisioned for the future was true? Doubt was creeping into her psyche more than she felt comfortable with.

If there was something she was sure of, she could talk the dream over with Mulder. He could come up with an elaborate theory she would find outlandish, she could rationalize it with science and they could possibly agree on a middle ground they would both be happy with. There was a comfort and order to their back and forth that she desired after the unbalanced feeling her dream left her with.

She ran a blow dryer and brush through her hair and dressed for the day in her charcoal suit and black V-neck blouse. With a fastidious eye, she checked herself in the full-length mirror to ensure nothing from her encounter with Mulder was visible to the naked eye. She leaned her head from side to side, checked her neckline for marks and smoothed out her suit before donning her heels.

Mulder sent her a text as she was leaving her apartment building. “Want to do an old man a favour and bring in a tall double shot, extra foam? I had two workouts this morning.”

Scully texted back an emoji thumbs up and offered breakfast too. She took a slight detour before arriving at the J. Edgar Hoover building. Mulder liked a specific kind of breakfast sandwich with eggs, bacon, tomatoes, mayonnaise and red relish. Scully only indulged in them on special occasions and she thought she could classify today as one. Any day that started with that kind of sex should be special.

When she arrived at work with breakfast in hand, Mulder was already at his most comfortable state without appearing to look like five o’clock was around the corner. His shirt sleeves were rolled up with his jacket hung by the door while his tie remained tight around his neck. He looked fresh for the day but already ensconced in the files in front of him.

It was his usual Monday morning game to decide what files would take their attention away from the comfort of the basement and into the world where a paranormal monster, presence or happenstance required the FBI’s attention.

“Need a break yet?” she asked when she entered with the drink tray and brown paper bag in hand.

“Ah, Scully,” he greeted with a happy sigh. “Did you get the hash browns?”

“With the side of hollandaise like you asked,” she assured him.

She was ignoring the doctor’s warning in her mind about the sauce Mulder liked for his shredded hash browns and got a side for herself. If being chased by a third-party, Russian-based force of agents, two car accidents, doppelgänger illusions and one man who desperately needed a rag for his forehead taught her, life was too short. Life was meant to be enjoyed and Mulder had been trying to ensure that for them both since they reconciled in Henrico County.

She wasn’t planning to let herself go or act carelessly but she could appreciate the small indulgences of life while they had them. At the very least, she was having a lot more sex than she was used to.

Mulder came around to her side of the desk and they laid out the sandwich wrappers on their laps. He threw his tie over his shoulder and tucked a napkin into the collar of his crisp white shirt.

Scully smiled at him as he took a healthy bite of the hamburger bun. “Cute.”

Mulder chewed on his breakfast and smiled at her. He winked at her with a confidence that made her feel a flip in her belly that mimicked the emotions of that morning. “Back at you.”

The quiet and peace they found in small moments of respite while the world continued on in its chaos around them was needed for their sanity. They could appreciate moments of normalcy that they found so few and far-between in their lives. Any other couple working in the same office might appreciate these moments less or find a banality in it but this was more like small pieces of paradise for her. All she required was to disconnect from the rest of the world for a short burst and she could feel centred again.

There was a beat in the air and she wondered if this was the time to bring up her dream or if she should wait for the question to arise.

“You okay, Scully?” he asked as he wiped the sauce from his egg sandwich from his chin. “Something on my face?”

She shook her head. It was now or never.

“No, I had… a strange dream,” she told him.

“ _Ah_ ,” he acknowledged and took another bite. They watched each other or a beat as they chewed and he swallowed. “Want to tell me about it? I have a degree from Oxford if that helps.”

Scully’s lips turned up in a grin. “Do you? I had _no_ idea.”

“You’d also be interested to know that beyond my PhD as an Oxford-educated psychologist, I’m one hell of a profiler. Not that that’s going to help us here but it’s something,” he boasted and took another bite.

Scully looked at the food in her hands and set it back in the wrapper. “I’m suddenly not hungry.”

“Why?” he asked as he reacted with a mouth half full of egg. He took a napkin to wipe across his face and set his food on to the wrapper in his lap. “What’s going on?”

Scully took a sip of coffee and watched him over the edge of the lid. When she set the paper cup down on the edge of the desk, Mulder looked at her questioningly.

“I didn’t sleep well,” she began.

“You said that,” he reminded her. “You were going to tell me about your dream.”

Scully sighed and picked up the sandwich again. It wasn’t going to do her much good to not eat that moment. “I’ll tell you after I eat.”

“Isn’t that usually my thing?” Mulder said with a wink and she shook her head at him. “There’s no bugs here. I swept it this morning.”

“Still not appropriate at work,” she warned him with a raised eyebrow. Mulder shrugged and took another bite. “I’m serious.”

Mulder nodded. “I respect you and your… business.”

“ _Mulder_ ,” she warned as a smile played on his lips.

“I’m being sincere!” he protested with a smile and she responded with a less than entertained look. Mulder laughed. “Okay, fine. I’ll stop.”

She sighed and looked down at her breakfast. “Anyone could walk down here and question-”

Mulder held up his hand to stop her. “I get it. I was just having a little fun.”

Scully took another sip of her coffee. “Maybe you could park that fun until we’re not in the office.”

Mulder held up the last bite of his sandwich and looked past her as he spotted something on the carpet beyond her chair. He grinned to himself and put the last bite in his mouth. “Ok.”

She glanced behind her where Mulder was looking and knew immediately what he was thinking. Her mind connected the dots and she felt her cheeks pink.

She recalled a moment of him behind her as she writhed in his hands while he pulsed inside of her. Her eyes were transfixed on the space under the door for approaching footsteps. It was hasty and reckless, to say the least.

After they were off the hook from Purlieu Services and they got their office back, something came over them. It was an indiscretion that Scully told him before, during and afterwards couldn’t happen again when they both knew that declaration wouldn’t stick.

She finished her food and crumpled the wrapper from her lap. “You’re a pervert.”

Mulder shrugged. “Yeah but I’m _your_ pervert.”

“I’m going to the bathroom,” she announced and left the office to wash her hands and rinse out her mouth.

The small bathroom down the hall from their office had a unisex sticker on the door. It had a urinal, a toilet inside a stall and a sink. Mulder had a janitorial staff member install a medicine cabinet during Scully’s cancer so she could keep iron supplements and other medications there if she needed them. It was slightly comforting to see the small cabinet still there after all that time. Right now it was stocked with deodorant, mouthwash, a toothbrush for both Mulder and Scully, razor for Mulder if he needed it and tampons. It mirrored the medicine cabinet at their home. It was more than just a little comforting when Mulder asked her at the pharmacy if she needed anything for the work cabinet. Mulder wasn’t always oblivious or focused on himself. Sometimes he had great moments of clarity with her and her needs. It was exactly enough.

When she returned, Mulder was sitting behind the desk with his coffee cup in one hand. He watched her as she entered the office and she narrowed her eyes on him.

“Your dream,” he prompted her.

Scully sighed as she prepared to explain what she had experienced. Mulder agreed about the hypnagogia as a place where the human mind would be susceptible to images from an outside force. As she explained how frightened and paralyzed she was at first, Mulder put his hand to his mouth as he listened.

“I couldn’t move off the bed,” she described as she sat down in the chair across from him. “I was someplace completely foreign to me. I knew it was a stranger’s bed.”

“What was the room like?” he asked and took another sip of his coffee.

“I could feel the sheets under my fingers,” she detailed. “I was stuck on the bed and I could feel the person behind me, watching me.”

“Who do you think it was?” he asked. “Was this person trying to harm you? Could you tell if they were young or old? Was he sinister with his intention or was he watching you with care? What do you think, Scully?”

She shook her head. “I think it was the person whose bed I was in.”

“Was anything familiar about the room?” he asked as he put his empty cup in the garbage next to the desk. Scully got up to walk around the office as she contemplated his questions. “The smells? Decor?”

Scully closed her eyes as she tried to envision the room. “There were snow globes… None of them made sense what was in them. I saw… a telescope. Planets… and music. A poster above me. I chased the figure out of the room and no matter where I went, I ended up back inside the house. The person kept escaping me. It was overwhelmingly frustrating and I was scared the entire time.”

“It sounds like sleep paralysis,” he said to her as he watched her pace. “REM atonia. Did you hear a hissing or a buzzing? Did you feel an electric current running through your body?”

“No, it was different, Mulder,” she disagreed as she stopped near the desk. “I mean, after the initial jolt of fear, I felt _compelled_ to follow the dark figure.”

“Hmm. Dark figures are usually meant to be avoided,” he replied thoughtfully. “Where was it leading you?”

Scully stopped in front of Mulder’s desk as she saw the ship in the photo, open on his desk. “ _There_. That’s the same boat.”

She could see herself picking up the snow globe from the bedroom in her dream.

“That’s an open X-File, Scully,” he told her.

“ _Chimera_ ,” she read as she picked up the picture. “What’s the file?”

“Two nights ago, two young women were found on that boat with almost deadly knife wounds,” Mulder said.

“How is that an X-File?” she asked him as she studied the old ferry boat.

Mulder held up one finger. “They both claim they were attacked by a _monster_.”

Scully set the picture down on the desk. “What kind of monster?”

“ _That’s_ the X-File,” he replied. “I was about to call in plane tickets to Norfolk when you got here.”

“We should go,” she insisted and Mulder stood up as he closed the file. “You agree?”

“You’re interested in going on a case because of a dream,” he said as he opened his laptop to book the tickets. “That’s enough for me.”

“We’re wasting government money on my dream of a figure in a bedroom that could be linked to an open X-File?” she clarified.

Mulder’s fingers flew across the keyboard as he booked the next tickets to Norfolk. He stood up and pulled his sleeves down. “I don’t see any waste happening. Good, solid, astute investigating.”

Scully picked up her purse off the floor. “Then let’s go and _not_ waste some money.”

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

The quickest and cheapest flights from Washington, D.C. to Norfolk, Virginia were easily booked after Mulder filed his F32-20 to send off to Skinner. He charged it to his FBI credit card and they were out the door, leaving to grab a bag before noon. The number of motor vehicle accidents, the cost of gas and the fewer fleet vehicles in circulation since the 90s meant that more trips would be taken by plane if possible.

As they landed at the Norfolk International Airpot, Scully noted Mulder’s distracted demeanour and she wondered if it was due to the details of her dream or Mulder’s early morning. He reached in his suit pocket and popped a seed into his mouth, scanning the crowd while they stood in line for a rental car.

He pulled the discarded shell from his lips and popped another one in. The inside of his pocket would soon be filled with pieces of sunflower shells he would need to empty out at some point before he stuffed latex gloves, an evidence bag or a flashlight in there. Mulder was messy but he wasn’t unsanitary. She had to appreciate that.

When they approached the Alamo counter, Mulder handed his badge and FBI credit card over to the attendant. He smiled politely. “I booked a rental vehicle under Mulder.”

“Of course. One mid-sized SUV will be ready out front,” the young man reported. “You’re renting the vehicle for one week?”

Mulder was watching the next counter of the line of rental agencies. Scully followed his gaze to the counter to where two men were leaving the National Car Rental desk.

“Mulder?” Scully prompted.

He looked down at her and then back to the attendant. “Sure, one week.”

He signed the paperwork and put a hand on Scully’s lower back to walk out to wait for their vehicle. Across the parking lots were Little Creek, Highway 60 and beyond that lay the Chesapeake Bay. The view was much different there from the small cottage they spent a weekend in on Kent Island. The sound of seagulls and boats were overwhelmed by the airplanes taking off and landing behind them.

They were 217 miles and eighteen years from their first weekend together as a couple. Now they were on the other side of an attempt at normalcy, a life on the run, an attempt and slight failure of a marriage and reconciliation. They had a child, they lost each other and they lost him.

Maybe it was her dream that had jarred her that morning, making her feel vulnerable or it was the proximity to Mulder recently that was causing her to reminisce about how awry their lives had turned out. They were slowly working their way back to a place they could be happy with. In a bed in Henrico County, they had vowed to try again, push forward and commit. At times, it felt like they had never skipped a beat and were picking up where they left off before they were hit with the hardship of Mulder’s obsessions and her inability to see him through this time.

A dark grey SUV pulled up and another attendant with an Alamo vest over his jacket exited. “Fox Mulder?”

Mulder nodded. “Yep.”

Scully pulled her luggage to the rear and the man opened the hatch for her. “ _Fox_ , hey?”

“That’s _his_ name,” Scully affirmed as she tried to move past a possibly uncomfortable conversation.

He gave her an appreciative grin. “Feels like it should be _your_ name.”

Mulder approached the back of the vehicle with his luggage. “What’s that?”

The attendant gave Mulder a grin. “Oh nothing, _Fox_.”

Mulder rolled his eyes. “Would you believe it’s a family name?”

Scully shook her head and got into the passenger side of the vehicle. When Mulder opened his door, she was sitting with her arms folded.

“Did he say something to you?” Mulder asked as he buckled his seatbelt.

Scully shook her head. “Nothing worth getting a man in his forties doing that job in trouble over.”

Mulder adjusted the mirrors and gave her a skeptical look. “You’re the boss.”

Scully grinned. “ _Now_ he gets it.”

“You have the address for the crime scene?” Mulder asked as he opened the navigation system.

Scully pulled her work tablet from her briefcase and opened the PDF file of the report they had been sent. She input the location into the navigation system and Mulder pulled out of the parking lot to head out.

It had rained that morning in Norfolk and the roads were still slick with water and fallen leaves. Mulder asked Scully more questions about her previous seizures and what she could recall about it.

“We went over this already,” she sighed.

“Just run it down for me again, Scully,” he argued. “What bridge were we on?”

“The Fourteenth Street Bridge,” she answered.

“From Arlington over the Potomac,” he confirmed and she nodded.

“And the pandemic?” he questioned. “What virus was it?”

“The Spartan Virus,” she answered.

“Has anything like this ever happened to you in the past?” Mulder pushed her further and she shook her head. “These seizures and this vision linked together suggest something else at play than your own mind. Your doctor assured me this was entirely new for your medical history.”

“It is. My last scan was clear so why would that be happening now?” she asked. “I’m open to possibilities and theories but the question remains: _why_?”

“Dreams are today’s answers to tomorrow’s questions,” Mulder said knowingly and she smiled slightly. “That’s a quote from Edgar Cayce. He was called the ‘sleeping prophet.’ Like you, he received visions in a hypnagogic state.”

“He also believed in the lost city of Atlantis,” she pointed out.

“Another reason to love the guy,” he retorted.

Sometimes fighting Mulder with facts that should discredit someone only made him believe harder. Actually, it almost always made him believe more in the person unless it was religious. That was a conversation for another time.

“You’ve been receiving visions through seizure,” Mulder replied as Scully turned on the wifi in the vehicle and used it to access the crime scene pictures. “Maybe this is an evolution of the form.”

She sighed but said nothing. Mulder could very well be right. She had little experience and knowledge of hypnogogic visions except for what she was able to read in an article Mulder found while they drove to the airport. Most of it sounded made up however after experiencing it for herself, she was sure it wasn’t a dream she came up with on her own.

“No, but you’re onto something, Scully,” Mulder insisted. “I’m sure of it.”

“What if it happens again?” she asked him.

“Follow it like you did with the snow globes,” he advised. “You can only explore in the vision to where the transmitter wants you to see. Don’t resist it.”

“I’ll try to keep that in mind,” she replied and cleared her throat again.

“We’re being followed,” Mulder commented as he glanced in the rearview mirror. Scully looked through the back window at the black sedan following them down the highway. “Since the airport.”

“Who would be following us on an open X-File?” she asked him.

Mulder shook his head and turned off the highway where the GPS indicated. “Not sure. Like most men in black, they usually reveal themselves at the worst time.”

They parked their vehicle at the edge of the old on-ramp for the abandoned ferry. The sun had come out and the ground was quickly drying in the warmth of the springtime air. This part of Lake Whitehurst was quiet. The botanical gardens hid much of the overpopulated area where two ships waited for their internment. Rusting steel and moss-covered logs along the shore were sharply contrast against the opulent homes they had passed to get out there.

It was probably the only space in Norfolk where the waterfront was not overwhelmed by the community that wanted a slice of paradise in the Chesapeake Bay.

Their contact on the case was a local Norfolk Police Department detective who had sent Mulder the X-File in the first place. Mulder told Scully that their contact, Alex Costa, held the crime scene over the weekend while he waited for them to get back in touch with him. Patrol officers had been assigned to guard the crime scene when Costa had not moved forward with the Norfolk P.D.’s theory that the victims were attacked or used drugs and had a fight.

They walked down the ramp towards the ferry where Detective Costa was leaning against his car.

“Hi,” he greeted with an outstretched hand. “Detective Costa.”

Scully shook his hand. “Agent Scully.”

Mulder held up his badge as he shook his hand next. “Agent Mulder.”

“Pleasure,” he replied as they continued down the dock towards the ferry hull. “So the victims and the perpetrators were two female high school seniors. Different schools. No past criminal history. They were good students. Uh, we talked to their respective families and checked their social media. No indications that the girls knew each other before the attack.”

This was the kind of thorough work Mulder and Scully didn’t usually find when coming in to take over on a case. Usually, an X-File was assigned to someone who was on the outs with local police and expected to do as little work as possible. Scully liked Costa right away for providing them with what they knew so she and Mulder could decipher the unknown. Here is the mystery, solve for X, find a solution. It was the most basic of math problems that involved every element of science and the paranormal. The ultimate equation that made them work together in ways that were successful, even though their superiors thought it was doomed from the beginning.

“The crime scene photos indicate that the wounds were made with a sharp-bladed instrument,” Scully replied.

“We found two knives at the scene,” Costa reported. “They, uh, cut each other up pretty bad.”

“What’s the condition of the girls now?” she asked as they walked across the ramp onto the vehicle deck of the ship.

“Uh, the one, Brianna Stapleton, was a millimetre away from having her carotid artery severed in the fight,” Costa said as he read through his notes on the booklet in his hand. “Now, both girls are unconscious in the hospital but doctors are confident they’ll pull through.”

Costa led them up two flights of stairs to the main passenger deck where the fight took place. Mulder gave her a look that was arguing it was an attack and not a fight. She raised her eyebrow at him to let him know that remained to be seen.

“Who reported the attack?” Mulder asked as Scully studied the blood splatter on the window.

“Anonymous 911 call,” Costa answered. “Didn’t leave a name but, uh, the voice was male and he sounded panicked. Forensics has a complete workup on the scene with pictures and measurements but this was left otherwise untouched.”

“There’s no blood leading to or from the spot where they were discovered,” Scully noted as she turned to Costa and Mulder. “Seems like once they started, they were going to finish.”

Mulder glanced around the crime scene and then up towards the ceiling where a teenage girl-sized hole was directly above him.

“I think the crime scene isn’t entirely just here,” Mulder theorized. “Can we take a look around the rest of the boat?”

Costa held his hand out to him. “By all means but watch your footing. We’ve tried to mark off where there have been integrity issues. As you can see, there are some parts that are less than safe.”

Mulder gave Scully a look and she followed him beyond the tape and out the doors to the side of the ship where life rafts rusted along with the rest of the vessel.

“You don’t think this is connected to your dream,” Mulder said as soon as they were out of earshot.

“Mulder, the way these girls attacked each other indicates an extreme emotional response,” she rationalized as they walked towards the aft of the ship. “It suggests to me that they do know each other.”

“But if they didn’t know each other, that same response could be an indication of extreme fear, like a lizard brain thing,” he contended, making reference to the flight or fight response in the brain stem.

“But either way, this meeting was certainly not a coincidence,” she acknowledged and he nodded. “And neither is our being here.”

“I’m glad to hear you say that,” he admitted as they reached the aft stairs to the balcony on the sun deck.

A patrol officer approached them. “Detective Costa would like to see you upstairs.”

Mulder pointed up in the direction they were headed. “That’s where we’re going.”

At the top of the sun deck, Scully could still picture the benches and tables where this vessel once gave leisure to travellers. As she looked out to the rest of the junk yard of trailers, trucks and old boats, a figure on the passenger ramp caught her eye.

An Asian man, in his mid-forties maybe, stood with his hands in the pockets of his black bomber jacket, watching the police work through the boat one last time before it was washed down by the crime scene cleanup. Not that it would make much of a difference.

“Hey guys, there was one other thing,” Costa began as he walked towards them and Scully turned to the detective. “The EMT said that he heard something when he was treating one of the victims. He said that the girls asked him if they found _Ghouli_.”

Mulder looked to Scully and nodded his chin towards her but she shook her head. The word was foreign to her.

Something was calling her to look back to the man on the passenger ramp. Maybe there was a reason he was watching them. Maybe in the metal and junk a hundred yards away, there was a clue. When she looked to the distance, in front of the black transport truck where he once stood, the space was empty.

“Is that Ghouli with an H?” Mulder asked.

“Yeah,” Costa replied. “Is there anything else you need from my guys here?”

Scully looked to Mulder and shook her head before turning back to scan the distance for the man who had been watching her. Aside from the awaiting crime scene cleanup crew and patrol officers guarding the entrance to the old Ferry, the area was dead.

“Is there a place we can get a cup of coffee?” Mulder asked Costa. “We’re staying at the Ambassador Inn Suites.”

“Big spender,” Costa muttered.

Mulder scoffed. “It’s not my dime. The U.S. government has us on a very strict per diem.”

Costa gave them an apologetic look. “Not you… I mean that’s not the greatest place to take-”

“I’ll be fine,” Scully reassured Costa. “Is there a coffee shop or restaurant close by? We can’t check in until four p.m.”

“Three Ships Coffee Roasters,” Costa advised. “There’s a police station about a twenty minute drive from you that I can arrange access to if you need it there.”

Mulder shook Costa’s hand and led Scully down the boat back to their SUV. He put the coffee shop and the motel in their GPS before doing a three-point turn to head out of the old ferry yard.

As they drove down the road towards the highway to get to the coffee shop, Mulder sighed. He donned his sunglasses and shifted in his seat, obviously working through something in his brain.

“What is it?” she asked.

Mulder shook his head. “I don’t know what Ghouli is.”

Scully crossed her arms. “We’ll find out.”

“It’s bugging me that a possible monster is involved in this case and I’ve never heard of it,” he confessed. “I’m feeling out of my element with this.”

Scully pulled out the tablet, turned on the vehicle’s wifi and went to her internet browser. She typed in _Ghouli_ into the search bar and waited. “It’s got its own website.”

“A monster has its own website, Richard Langley’s conscious was uploaded into a simulation, bees are in danger of becoming extinct and the X-Files are digital in an online database being shared with every U.S. intelligence agency,” Mulder said with a shake of his head. “What’s next? Right-wing politicians accusing liberal media of hiring crisis actors after a mass shooting to protect their gun laws?”

“And keep the public at risk? Nothing in the world could be _that_ farfetched,” Scully replied and Mulder scoffed. “Are members of the syndicate usually conservatives?”

“I think they adhere to those policies because they find the members easier to control through fear propaganda,” he theorized as they pulled into the parking lot of the Three Ships. Mulder looked at his watch. “Pretty good time. Norfolk likes us today.”

“We still have to wait another hour before we can check in,” she reminded him.

“I need a caffeine pick me up anyway,” he said as he turned off the SUV and unbuckled his seatbelt.

Scully exited the car and looked around the more relaxed area of town. Most of the places they frequented in Norfolk were brick and glass buildings with sign-in sheets, guards at the gate and video surveillance. This was a more creative, beachy district of Norfolk with the smell of the salty air and sand shook out from beach towels now coating the pavement. Across the street from them were rental condos perfect for tourists who plan to spend their time soaking up the Virginia sun and experiencing the beach only four blocks away.

The sound of seagulls and ships echoed down the street. She felt nostalgic for a time before she looked into a darkness with Mulder with apt curiosity and a gun. Even then after all she had seen, when she discovered she was pregnant, she wasn’t deterred for a chance at normalcy. Her mind had envisioned Mulder and her as a family with their baby. She had hoped they would have been able to soak up the carefree and relaxed climate as a family in places such as this without a gun in a holster and her badge in her pocket. It would have been nice to do just once.

During family vacations as a child, Melissa would drag her younger sister to independent cafes like these. Ever the social butterfly, she would meet local boys who found her charming enough to buy her anything she wanted on the menu while Dana read through the free library in the corner with the warped pages from the humid air curling between her fingers.

“Are you coming, Scully?” Mulder asked her.

The vision of Melissa pulling a young Dana into a boho-styled cafe as their brothers played at an arcade next door left her mind. She looked at Mulder and smiled tightly.

“Yeah,” she said.

Mulder held the door for her and when she stepped inside, the nuance of the independent and creative cafe style hit her right away. The shop had a mix of different stained woods, exposed beams and baristas in their own clothing except for a black apron to tell you they were staff. It was a far cry from the Starbucks near her downtown apartment that enforced a strict dress code of black pants or khakis and one of three different shirts with their logo on them. Aside from the signage out front, there was little in the shop that advertised anything more than the brand of coffee and the relaxed atmosphere. Pictures of old sailboats adorned the walls and the smell of freshly ground beans filled Scully’s nostrils.

Mulder handed Scully the laptop bag. “You want anything?”

“No thanks, I’ve had three today,” she declined.

“Can you pull up that website you found while I order something?” he asked and she nodded to leave him to get another fix of the legalized substance. “You sure you’re good?”

Scully nodded and opened the laptop on one of the tall tables while Mulder placed his order. When the laptop loaded its operating system, she signed onto the free wifi and typed in: “[ghouli.net](https://ghouli.net/)”.

He adjusted his suit as he sat in the chair next to her and placed his phone beside the laptop.

They leaned into the screen simultaneously and Mulder breathed out through his nose disapprovingly. “It’s typical. Teeth, mucus. Ghouli probably feeds on human flesh. Yawn.”

Scully continued to scroll down through the Encounters page. “Well, the site’s only been active for the last couple of months. Mostly fan fiction.”

“Yeah, this is my problem with modern day monsters, Scully. There’s no chance for emotional investment,” he quipped. “Frankenstein and the Wolfman, not only did they inspire bowel-clenching fear but there was pathos. You know, Frankenstein was afraid of fire but he just wanted a friend.”

“There’s a lot of money to be made in scaring people,” Scully acknowledged. “Maybe the girls were manipulated to attack each other in order to goose traffic.”

Mulder nodded as he thought about that as he leaned in closer to the screen and she continued to scroll through the page.

“Most of these stories are written by an @Rever,” she noted.

His phone buzzed and he picked it up to read the message. “Ah, the girls have regained consciousness. We can talk to them at the hospital now.”

Scully closed the laptop and slipped it inside the leather satchel.

A barista behind them placed a cup on the counter. “Bob. Double shot cappuccino, extra foam.”

Mulder tucked his phone in his pocket. “Yes, thank you.”

“No worries, buddy,” the barista called back.

“ _Bob_?” Scully repeated.

“Like I wanted to explain Fox for the millionth time,” he retorted as he got off his chair.

Mulder secured a plastic lid on his paper cup and he held the door for her. As he unlocked the car, he caught her expression.

“When I give them the last name Mulder, they always spell it wrong or write ‘ _mouldy_ ,’” he told her as they got in the rental vehicle. “Bob is easier.”

“Not Rob or Marty?” she asked as she buckled her seatbelt. She was referring to Rob Petrie, the name picked for their first undercover detail when they got back onto the X-files. Marty was the pseudonym he used for triple X transactions. “Why Bob?”

“Rob is actually a more common name than Bob,” Mulder began as he started the car and backed out onto the street. “When I used Rob in the past, me and five other guys would approach the coffee counter. That was awkward.”

Scully took a sip of his coffee and made a face. She frequently tasted his unsweetened coffee beverages to attempt forgoing sweetener in her morning joe as well. Her palate couldn’t adjust. “What about Mitchell? Or Marty?”

“Mitchell? You mean Mitchell Robinson?” he clarified and she nodded. Mulder grinned and rubbed his bare cheek, obviously reminiscing about the beard he grew during that case. “I miss that guy but Mitchell is kind of a pretentious WASP wasn’t he?”

“I liked his beard though,” she mused as she thought back to the week they spend in Vail, Colorado undercover as a married couple searching for Bigfoot. It was after Donnie Pfaster had taken her again in her own apartment. That case turned out to be helpful in reassuring Scully in her abilities, even with all the trials they faced along the way. “A beard suits you.”

“That beard was pretty hard on your skin,” he commented and she scoffed. “And Marty… I don’t like to think of that lonely guy. I left him behind after I somehow _convinced_ you to date me.”

“You mean, rather than I was in love with you?” she countered and Mulder grinned. “What?”

“You love me,” he commented.

“ _Was_ in love,” she corrected him.

“Nah, you’re still there,” he chided her and she scoffed. “ _Right_?”

Her cheeks pinked. “Fine.”

“A- _ha_!” he teased as he poked at her arm. “You love me.”

“You’re in love with me too,” she reminded him.  
  
Mulder beamed at her. “ _And how_.”

Scully couldn’t help but laugh. These stolen moments in a car while they were working were parts of their relationship no one else could see or understand. Not only did he made her feel safe and loved, he looked at her like she was shiny and new every time she put herself in his hands. She thought back to their conversation a few weeks ago when she asked him about meeting someone younger who could give him the children he deserved. It was then he affirmed the only future he wanted was one with her in it.

“Do you want to interview the girls together or separately?” Scully asked.

“I’ll take one, you take the other,” he replied. “We still need to check in to the hotel and at some point, I need to buy you dinner.”

“ _You’re_ buying?” she clarified.

“Gotta make up for the crappy accommodations,” he muttered as they pulled into the hospital parking lot.

She tilted her head at him. “Mulder, I’m _fine_.”

“Just let me take you to a nice steakhouse,” he admonished her. “Good _God_ , woman.”

“Again with calling me woman,” she noted with a smile playing on her lips.

Mulder parked the SUV and shut off the engine. “You like it.”

“As much as you like a fi-”

“Okay,” he cut her off and they laughed. “Get your mind back on this case please.”

Scully laughed again. “You went there first.”

Mulder shook his head. “And I’ll go there again if you don’t watch it.”

She knew exactly what that meant and had to nip it in the bud before he followed through. Scully held up one manicured finger at him but her phone buzzed and she pulled it from her jacket pocket. “Detective Costa said we have permission from the parents to interview the girls.”

“Saved by the case,” he warned her.

 

***** *** *****

 

At Detective Costa’s instructions, along with the doctors and nurses involved in treating Briana Stapleton and Sarah Turner, the young women had been kept in private rooms. Down the hall and to the right, Mulder found Sarah in a room separate from other patients. Briana was in the opposite direction from the nurses’ station, up the hallway and to the left.

While Scully didn’t believe that Ghouli was a threat to the girls or one another, due to the trauma of the event, she agreed with their separate quarters.

There were cards and flowers in Briana’s room while she remained hooked up to a heart monitor. She was sitting in her bed with a cell phone in her lap and a notebook open but blank.

“Hi Briana, I’m Dana Scully,” she introduced herself as she showed the young woman her badge. “I’m here to ask you a few questions. Your mom and dad know I’m here. Are you comfortable talking to me without them present?”

The cuts and bandages on her face shouldn’t be there. A seventeen-year-old shouldn’t have to ever face the horror of fighting for her own life on an abandoned ferry boat. Whatever she was doing out there that night, it didn’t make sense.

The young woman nodded and Scully pulled a chair close to her hospital bed. Briana glanced down at her phone and from where Scully was sitting, there was not a notification. She looked at Scully and sighed. “Did you talk to the detective?”

“I did,” she replied. “Do you want to tell me what happened? About Ghouli and your injuries?”

Briana nodded. “Ghouli is _real_. I saw it. It was standing closer than you are to me. I was scared. I had to defend myself.”

“What did it look like?” Scully asked.

“It had rows of sharp teeth and goo dripping from its mouth,” Briana described. “It had long fingers, long legs and this weird body that was slimy like a fish. It had a tail and wide eyes. I’ve never seen anything so gross.”

“And how did you find this Ghouli?” Scully asked.

“I fell into this hole, into its lair I guess,” Briana described.

“What about Sarah Turner?” Scully asked her.

“Who?” Briana countered.

“She was on the floor, next to you,” Scully told the young woman. “Also injured.”

“I don’t know any Sarah,” Briana denied. “Okay? All I saw was Ghouli.”

“So, how did you know to go to the ferry?” Scully asked her finally.

“It sounds crazy but I had this _dream_ …” Briana started. “But it wasn’t a dream. It felt real like I was really living it. And at first, it was scary because I couldn’t move. Like, I was in bed, but it wasn’t my own bed.”

“Was anyone else there?” Scully asked as she tried not to think about her own lucid dream that morning.

“There was someone next to me but I couldn’t see who it was,” Briana described as she looked down at her phone again. “It was a dark figure. I jumped out of bed and chased him.”

“Where were you?” Scully asked.

“It wasn’t even my own house,” she replied. “I would run through the hallways and try to get to the living room to get outside. And I would just end up back inside again.”

“Like a maze,” Scully commented. “Where no matter which door you open, you end up in the same place.”

Briana looked at Scully with recognition and fear. “ _Yeah_.”

“Were you being directed towards anything in particular?” Scully asked, hoping this young woman’s dream was separate from her own.

“A souvenir,” Briana stated. “That… the kind… you shake it and it snows.”

It wouldn’t be common for anyone Briana’s age to know about snow globes. They were more of a common trinket until the late 90s. It made sense she wasn’t able to accurately name it.

“What was inside your snow globe?” Scully asked her.

“A ferry,” Briana answered. “The old one out by the river. It’s a party spot…not that I would know personally. My parents are really strict.”

“Have you ever had this kind of dream before?”

“Kind of,” she began. “My boyfriend and I did this fun house thing at the fair. That was the first time I saw Ghouli. My boyfriend… he was just as freaked out about seeing it as I was, maybe more excited.”

“You have a boyfriend?” Scully asked.

Briana reached over to her bedside table and picked up the tin of cinnamon mints. “I’m not supposed to. My parents don’t approve. They’re really lame but he’s cool.”

“What’s his name?” she asked.

“Jackson,” Briana answered. “Van De Kamp.”

The name struck her but she wondered if it was just a coincidence.

“How-” Scully cleared her throat. “How old is he?”

“He’s seventeen,” she replied. “Like me. I thought about telling my parents about him but they don’t want me to date let alone a high school drop out.”

She could feel her face drop and Briana shrugged.

“I know but it’s not because he’s not smart,” Briana defended him. “He’s really smart. He just… he’s probably too smart, you know? He loves to argue and his school actually asked him to finish the year from home but I don’t know if he finished…He lives with his parents in Willowwood.”

Scully nodded and looked down at her notebook. “I’m sure I’ll be back to ask you any further questions. Get some rest.”

Briana glanced down at her phone again. “Yeah. Thanks.”

When Scully exited Briana’s room, Mulder was leaning against the wall next to the door with his notebook in hand as he waited for her to finish. He looked as though he had something to tell her but didn’t want to. She recognized that expression well.

She had been on the receiving end of tall tales and wild theories but rarely on the end of bad news. She had been the one to tell him about her cancer, her inability to have a child, his mother’s disease at her passing and the X-Files being closed on them. When Mulder had to tell her bad news, he looked like he was on the receiving end of it with an expression only she could discern as panicked.

“What did she tell you?” Scully asked him as they began down the hall.

Mulder handed her his notebook and she quickly read down the page to see Jackson’s name listed on the back of the page with the neighbourhood underlined. Scully handed back the notebook and Mulder tucked it into his pocket.

“Sarah told me the same dream as you told me about this morning,” he began. “The sleep paralysis, the labyrinth, the snow globe. You share the same story.”

“And the girls share the same boyfriend,” she added. “Jackson Van De Kamp.”

“Scully-” Mulder started.

“I _know_ ,” she agreed. “Mulder, it has to be a coincidence.”

“No it’s not,” he disagreed as he put a hand on her back. “You were sent here. You were meant to be here. We gotta find out where this kid lives.”

They continued down the hall and towards the elevator. Scully took a steadying breath and leaned her side into Mulder’s chest as the doors closed with her arms hugging her torso. He wrapped around her body and squeezed her slightly. Softly, he pressed his lips to the side of her head and she closed her eyes as she allowed the moment of comfort to settle over her.

If she ever had any doubt about Mulder’s ability to help her through a situation, this was washing away those concerns. She felt his love for her more intensely than when he was scared out of his mind during her cancer and his strength to be her rock more acutely than when she found and lost Emily.

She looked up at him and her stomach growled loudly in the elevator car. Mulder’s eyebrows shot up and he looked around them comically.

“Was that Ghouli?” he asked her and she nudged his chest. “Seriously, was that it’s war cry?”

“I’m _hungry_ ,” she almost pouted.

“Okay, while Detective Costa is getting our address for the Van de Kamps I’m going to get _that_ monster fed,” Mulder said as he pulled out his phone. He gave a wink to her as he dialled Costa’s number and she pulled out her phone to look for a restaurant nearby. “Nothing under three-stars. This day deserves a ridiculous bill.”

“How ridiculous?” she asked him. “I’m in a suit.”

Mulder thought for a moment. “You choose. It’s your monster we need to feed.”

Scully shook her head with a smile on her lips and found a restaurant that would satisfy them both.

“Detective Costa, I need an address if you have some time,” Mulder requested.

The elevator car reached the bottom floor and Mulder put his hand on her lower back as they walked out of the lobby. Scully found a restaurant that had a price point Mulder would be happy with and sent the directions to his phone. Byrd and Baldwin Brothers Steakhouse suddenly sounded like the only thing that could satisfy her at the moment.

Mulder opened her car door for her and hung up his phone. He looked at the address she sent him and nodded. “Byrd and Baldwin? I’m into it.”

“Good,” she remarked. “Because you said you’re buying.”

“Let’s go G-woman,” he ordered as she climbed in. Mulder shut her door and got into the driver’s side. “Costa is going to get me the address while we eat so don’t get offended if I am on my phone at dinner.”

“Your fancy East Coast private schools never covered that?” she teased him.

Mulder laughed. “Surprisingly, they _did_ mention when out for dinner with a beautiful woman to only pay attention to her so I guess they did.”

“I’m sure,” she replied as he put the address into the SUV’s GPS. As they pulled onto the highway, she cleared her throat. “Mulder, what if William has been here all this time?”

Mulder glanced at her as they headed towards downtown Norfolk. “There would be no way of knowing.”

“The Van De Kamps were _supposed_ to be far enough away from us,” Scully reminded him. “To protect him from what we had gotten wrapped up in.”

“Scully-” he started.

“What was the _point_ of losing all of that time together if he was just going to end up in our area?” she cut him off. “He was a three-hour drive from us.”

He nodded and she saw his jaw clench. She could tell he was debating what to say next, whether to draw on the side of reason as a comfort or emotion to placate her feelings. Mulder could do both but it was always a guess to her which one he would choose.

“I’m sorry we lost that time with him,” Mulder said finally. “I’m sorry what I got you two wrapped up in.”

“Mulder, _no_ ,” she said immediately as she reached across the car to grab his knee. “Of anyone in this world, I never blamed you.”

“I know,” he assured her. “ _I_ blame me.”

“Mulder…”

“I promise, I’ll do what I can to help you with all of this,” he vowed as he glanced towards her. “I’ll follow your lead. If this is a coincidence or not, there is a young man who is speaking to you, Scully. If it is William, he wants to find you.”

Scully looked out the car window as she contemplated that. “Thank you.”

The grey sky had returned and Scully wondered if it was foreboding for their time in Norfolk. She certainly hoped not.

 


End file.
